Barack the Faithless Strikes Again. The Obama Administration has announced its decision to permit a lot more offshore oil drilling, in open defiance of Obama's environmentalist supporters, in yet another attempt to mollify the President's enemies. A lot of people, MSNBC's Keith Olbermann among them, are puzzled by Obama's endless attempts to achieve bipartisanship, even tho his enemies have absolutely no desire to cooperate with him on anything (Olbermann thinks Republicans are willing to cooperate on issues of national security, but I have my doubts). I'm afraid I do understand.+All members of minorities have to deal with a lack of general acceptance. Different individual members of minorities deal with their minority condition in different ways, sometimes at different times. Some hide (gay men and lesbians). Some cast off all distinguishing features, to the extent possible, to become as "white bread" as possible. Some become militant and in-your-face. Some adopt the stance that "the best revenge is living well", and turn their energies to making the best life they can, without regard to what other people think or do.+Barack Obama is a double-minority, which makes everything worse.+Bluntly put, Barack Obama is an "inter-race" or "biracial". As such, he has had to cope all his life with trying to be all things to all people, and insist on tolerance for himself, which has obligated him to be tolerant of others in return. He is certainly not white-enuf to white people to be considered "one of us", and not black-enuf to black people. He has had to try to make a virtue and positive out of what everyone else regards as a negative. Having had to slog thru various societies and subsocieties all his life — remember that he lived for years in Indonesia, a uniracial society, as a non-Moslem in a dominantly and intolerantly Moslem society — Obama simply cannot give up the idea of prevailing over time. And he became President of the United States, so has, to his mind, manifestly been confirmed in his belief system and habitual behavior. So this is no time to stop trying to get everybody to get along.+Obama did not have to go thru a police beating to take the attitude of Rodney King: "Can we all get along?" (Usually remembered, inaccurately, as "Can't we all just get along?" See King's statement on YouTube, at the 0:57 mark.) Obama went thru decades of small indignations, rejections, questions, and challenges to his authenticity, which prepared him well for the challenge by "birthers" to his authenticity as an American. He knows what's behind all of it, as we all know what's behind it. Call it "clannishness" (or "Klannishness"); call it racism. Call it "small-mindedness" or "discomfort with outsiders" or "unease with change". It all comes down to Them vs. Us, and for the Republican Party, despite its token-n* minstrel-show RNC Chairman Michael Steele, 'colored people' are Them, not Us.+Barack Obama won over a majority of the electorate, but that's not good enuf. He could ram thru a program over Republican objections, but that's also not good enuf. Because he has to win over the people who hate him. It is his deepest psychological need. "See past race. See me. Accept me." If to win over present-day, seemingly intractable enemies he must pander to them, while pretending he's not selling out his principles, he will pander. The question becomes, does Obama HAVE any principles? Or is it all about him, about his deep need to be accepted — even loved — by everybody?+It is in the nature of American politics that the only people who can put up with the sh* are profoundly damaged people who not merely crave attention but need to be loved. It's not their principles they need people to love. It's THEM. And if to be loved, they have to sell out their principles, that is, for all too many major politicians, a very small price to pay. For the rest of us, who vote for someone because of the principles the candidate claims to espouse, we are continually surprised that they don't stick to their principles and fite for them — and thus fite for us. We shouldn't be surprised when we are sold down the river — or in the case of the offshore-drilling issue, pushed out to sea. But we shouldn't tolerate it, either.+George Bush was a likable, even adorable guy. But he allowed himself to be used by his masters to do terrible things, in our name. Barack Obama is also likable — because he needs to be liked — but we mustn't let him do terrible things in our name. NO to nuclear power; NO to offshore drilling unless there is NO possibility of accidents creating oil spills to coat seabirds, poison marine life, and foul beaches. Mr. Obama, we don't care about your psychological needs. WE care about principles, even if you do not. Do what we elected you to do. See a shrink to help you accept not being universally adored.+(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 4,386 — for Israel.)

Single-Issue Legislation. Why on Earth was a change in college-loan and -grant procedures enacted in the same bill with healthcare "fixes"? This is utterly improper. No law should cover more than one subject, unless the two subjects cannot rationally be separated. Health insurance and college financing are easily separated. It is abusive to merge two such different matters into a single act of legislation, in order to force thru a less-popular measure by piggybacking it onto a more-popular measure. Congress should legislate each issue on its own merits.+As to the substance of the college-financing reforms, it is reverse-privatization, predicated on the expectation of savings to the government from NOT letting private banks do college lending but from having the Government handle these loans itself. I have always been puzzled as to how we could possibly expect that an entity that needs to make a profit could lower costs as against an entity that does NOT need to make a profit. How can costs + profits come out to be lower than costs alone? It makes no sense, and privatization of government functions has proved, in many places, to be an outrageous transfer of wealth to the rich from the rest of us, that has given the public no benefit. In my state, New Jersey, a private water-and-sewer authority was paying HUGE salaries to dozens of people until the new Republican governor, Chris Christie, forced the CEO out. But Christie seems inconsistent about privatization. On the one hand, he recognized that in NJ it has gone very wrong; but on the other, he wants to see more privatization! Grow up. Our Department of Motor Vehicles was apparently privatized for a while (perhaps before I moved back to NJ from NYC), and it proved a DISASTER, of long waits and unresponsive "service". The DMV was returned to public control, and works brilliantly now. Privatization is just another scam by the rich to steal from the poor and middle class. It is NEVER reasonable. Government responsibilities must be performed by GOVERNMENT.

Kathleen Sebelius, Heroine. Yesterday, health-insurance companies announced their intention to ignore the intent of the new healthcare law and continue to refuse to cover children with pre-existing conditions until 2014, because of what they claimed was a defect in drafting of that provision. Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius was having none of it. She sent what NBC News called a "strongly [harshly?] worded letter" to the health insurance trade association to tell the heads of the defiant companies in no uncertain terms that HHS would not let them get away with any such defiance, but would issue regulations making plain that such defiance is ILLEGAL. One day later, the health-insurance scumbags backed down. Good for her! I'd have had them flogged, but this achieves the same end, if without the satisfaction of beating the crap out of those enemies of society.+Huh? The present Prime Minister of Iraq, Nouri al-Maliki, is appealing the results of an election his government presided over. Is he out of his mind? If his government couldn't run an election, why does al-Maliki think he should be allowed to run the nation's government in all things? Absurd. YOU held the election. If it wasn't clean, it's your fault, and you have no right to complain. Accept the results, and move on. That's what little-d democrats do, and a peaceful transfer of power is something Iraq very much needs. George Washington stunned the world in actually giving up power to John Adams after two terms as President. Let al-Maliki stun the world too by transferring power to a democratically elected successor with grace and good humor.+(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 4,386  for Israel.)

Soccer Stupidity in L.A. David Beckham, the highest-paid soccer player on Earth, sustained an injury during a period when he was on loan to a European team. That injury will very adversely impáct the Los Angeles Galaxy (team of Major League Soccer), from which he gets a preposterous amount of money for a player in a minor sport.

LA Galaxy is paying Beckham $32.5 million over five years. He is expected to make about $200 million more in endorsements and merchandise fees.

How stupid is the management of the L.A. Galaxy, to permit their biggest star to play for another team and get injured so badly in doing so that he can't play for the Galaxy?+"Major League Soccer" is of course no such thing in the United States.* Soccer is a foreign sport that has been pushed by government and media for two generations, without ever becoming a major sport in the United States. I don't know why the U.S. and the various state and local governments in this country keep pushing the U.S. to become a soccer nation. I suppose media want another major sporting event with which to build ratings and charge high fees for advertising to men. But why would governments push soccer? This insistence on imposing soccer upon people who want no part of it bespeaks a hatred for the culture of the United States by our ruling elite, but where did their contempt for American culture come from, and how did it so thoroughly saturate government at all levels that almost every town and college campus has soccer fields today?+Soccer is perhaps the stupidest game in the world, in not allowing players to use the things that made the human being human, capable of mastering the environment: hands.+Soccer is intimately connected with massive violence and mass death all around the world.+But still people who hate this country keep pushing soccer at us, year after year after decade. All for naught. Children are pressured into soccer teams, and stupid, anti-American people insist on calling housewives "soccer moms". But when all those kids who were intimidated into playing that supremely stupid, supremely foreign game grow up, they abandon soccer forever. They never attend a game of pro soccer or any school soccer that their kid is not playing in. They never watch soccer on television. They become Americans in their adulthood, after a childhood being brainwashed by our alien governments into becoming little pseudo-foreigners.+I hope the L.A. Galaxy loses every cent of Beckham's remaining contract — and goes out of business — because Beckham has been rendered incapable of playing that stupid game on our shores. He's not happy here, anyway, because he's not a superstar here, because soccer is nothing here. He wants to go back to Europe. Let him buy an airplane ticket — he's certainly got the money for it — and good riddance to European rubbish. Now, if we could only load the entire leadership of MLS and the game of soccer itself onto that plane, we would be well rid of them all.____________________

* My area, Newark, NJ, will see the opening of the "New York" Red Bulls' new arena just across the Passaic River from Downtown Newark (in NJ, despite the NY in the team's name, just as both "New York" football teams, the Giants and Jets, actually play in NJ). The audience to fill (or is it only fractionally fill?) this beautiful new structure (see fotos on my Newark fotoblog at June 9, 2009 and February 13, 2010) will likely come mainly from immigrants in North Jersey (including Newark's very large Portuguese and Brazilian community) and NYC, not from people born in the United States.+(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 4,383 — for Israel.)

Kicking Obama in the Balls by Kicking Biden in the Teeth. Smiley Joe Biden went to Israel and (other parts of) Palestine this week, and while he was all toothy grins, making nice to the Radical Zionists, the Israeli Government announced that it would build 1,600 more units of Jewish housing in the Palestinian West Bank, effectively telling Biden, and Obama, to go f* themselves. Smiley didn't realize that he was being stabbed in the back, because he was facing the Israeli Prime Minister, and the attack was launched by a junior henchman from behind. Mind you, the PM in no way disowned the action announced the very day Biden arrived, so while one Israeli official stabbed Biden in the back, the other kicked him in those pearly whites, and Smiley just kept on smiling.+Surely Biden realized that he had been set up and betrayed in an extremely public way, but he kept on telling the world that there is no space between the United States and Israel, and pretending aloud that the Middle East's security is best served by leaving no doubt that the United States is 100% Zionist, and will never do anything to injure Israel in any regard, not even if Israel tells the U.S. very publicly to go f* itself a thousand times over.+The Palestinians did what they had to do. They told Smiley that Israel is not serious about peace, and Smiley's 13,000-mile roundtrip was a complete and utter waste of time and fuel — and, tho the Palestinians probably did not make this point, a profligate contribution to "greenhouse gases". What the Palestinians really need to say, in so many words, is

Israel doesn't want peace. It wants Palestine.

There will never be peace until Israel is dissolved, and merged into a democratic, multiethnic and multireligious Unified or United Palestine, in which Jews have absolutely no special rights and which cannot be called "The Jewish State", because that is racist, theocratic, and factually wrong. It is grotesque for the United States, which is fiting a worldwide war against Islamic theocracy, to embrace and finance Jewish theocracy.+So what will the U.S. do about the calculated, deliberate offense Israel visited upon Smiley Boy? Nothing.+Why not?, you may wonder. Because the Israel Lobby is a potent Fifth Column in the United States that owns Congress lock, stock, and barrel. If Obama wants healthcare to pass, he cannot defy Israel, because Jews in Congress will vote to humiliate Obama and render him a hugely unpopular, one-term, failed President, that's why.+The thought of a vote for Obamacare very soon worries Radical Zionists, because if Obama's version of universal healthcare passes any time soon, while the insult to Biden, Obama, and the people of the United States is fresh in people's minds, Obama might actually take revenge on Israel, by ENDING U.S. financial support of all kinds and distancing itself from the present Israeli Government, putting all kinds of space between the two countries — which might well bring down the Government that attacked Biden and Obama, instead of the other way around.+So don't be surprised if the Zionist Lobby holds up a vote on healthcare for several weeks, to give time for stupid Americans, who remember nothing very long, to forget that Israel sprang a trap on the Vice President of the United States, lest a few Americans find their b ... guts, and teach Israel a badly needed lesson. We can be a very good friend, or a catastrophic enemy. You kick us in the teeth, we beat you to death. Iraq isn't the only country we can bomb mercilessly in two or three weeks of Shock and Awe, then invade, occupy, and fundamentally change. Believe it or not, Israel, there are limits to what we will tolerate.+(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 4,382 — for Israel.)

NO! to Obamacare. It is theoretically possible that a bill on some topic or other could be worse than the present Senate measure that President Obama wants the House of Representatives to endorse, but it would pretty much have to be written as a joke, vying for "World's Worst Legislation" in the Guinnesss Book of World Records.

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The present legislation arises from a severely defective analysis, and proposes a draconian and totalitarian (fascistic) solution that will almost certainly make many things worse. In attempting to fix one problem, this measure would produce economic catastrophe for millions, and increase offshore outsourcing.

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The justification for compelling everyone to buy private health insurance (the "individual mandate") is that people who now have health insurance are wrongly required to pay for the healthcare of people who don't have health insurance ("cost shifting"), so there is a wrongful transfer of wealth from one group to another. The problem with this analysis, aside from the fact that it is dubious, is that cost shifting is just moved to different people. And tho present-day cost shifting is of limited scope, requiring tens of millions of Americans to buy health insurance they neither want nor can afford is a HUGE transfer of wealth to private health insurance corporations, with massively negative consequences upon the people who do not now have such insurance.

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Is massive cost shifting a real problem, for which Obamacare's individual mandate is a sensible and fair remedy? Austin Frakt, "a health economist and principal investigator with the Department of Veterans Affairs' Health Services Research and Development Service and assistant professor with the Boston University School of Public Health", addressed this issue in an August 31, 2009 blog essay called "The Health Care Cost Shifting Myth"

In conclusion, cost shifting is not as large and widespread a phenomenon as some would believe. Under some market conditions it is inconsistent with economic theory. And, while it can occur under other market conditions it is far from a dollar-for-dollar shift in costs. The most recent studies of the phenomenon find little evidence of cost shifting or very low levels of it. Claims that reductions in public payments for health care will necessarily show up as commensurate increases in private payments are unfounded.

So why is Government forcing people to buy private health insurance? Is this just some enormous boondoggle to increase the already obscene profits of private insurance companies?

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The proposed fix to inconsequential cost shifting doesn't fix a thing, because it entails subsidizing some people at other people's expense. So there is still a transfer of wealth from some to others. But the biggest transfer of wealth is from private citizens to mega-health insurance corporations, which people are to be compelled to buy from, at suchever rates as those heartless corporations may charge. Competition is supposed to keep costs low. Oh? That's worked really well thus far, hasn't it? Oh. No. It hasn't worked at all. And now there will be even less incentive to keep costs down, because people have absolutely no choice. They all will have to buy from these heartless corporations, at any price they care to set.

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Since those mega-corporations will no longer be able to keep their costs down by refusing coverage to people with preexisting conditions, and no longer be able to cut people off once they have passed a payout maximum of the corporation's choosing, the costs to the corporations will inescapably go up, which means that the premiums will inevitably go up too, because the corporation is certainly not going to take those increased costs out of profits. No, they will maintain their obscene profitability by raising rates as high as the sky, because people can't cancel their insurance because Government will punish them if they do. And where is all the money collected in fines to go? If people calculate that it is much cheaper to pay a fine than to pay exorbitant health insurance premiums, we will again have millions and millions of Americans without health insurance, and the problem will not have been solved in the slitest.

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Unfortunately, tens of millions of Americans could not possibly pay either regular healthcare premiums or the fine that Mussobama demands they pay, because they are already deep in debt and going deeper into debt every year WITHOUT health insurance or a fascistic fine pushing them yet deeper into debt.

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The supposition underlying Obamacare must be that the 50 million Americans who do not now have health insurance could perfectly well afford it, but they just selfishly and short-sightedly refuse to buy it, preferring instead to throw their money away on frivolous things like dancing their lives away in clubs or buying booze and lottery tickets. The fact, however, is nothing like that. The reason the bulk of the uninsured do not have health insurance is that they simply cannot afford it.

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Never have Congress and the White House shown more plainly how completely out of touch they are with the way ordinary Americans live. They seem to think we can all afford another $475 a month, for a single person, or $750 a month for a family, for health insurance, taken from our "discretionary income", I suppose; and our choice not to spend that money on health insurance is irresponsible selfishness. The reality is that for tens of millions of Americans, if they have $2 left when they arrive at work to pick up their check on payday, they feel very lucky, and each month they are a little further in debt than the month before — debt they can never escape because the Government smiles upon usury, and traps people in debt.

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Now, the working poor and lower middle class will be compelled to take health insurance, and Government will generously subsidize those whom the GOVERNMENT says can't afford it, to the extent of what the GOVERNMENT thinks is fair. Two questions: (1) will the subsidy cover EVERYTHING, or will the working poor and lower middle class still have to pay something, which they cannot afford?; (2) where is the money for the subsidy to come from, if not from other people? Is the Government just going to print money to give out? Or is it going to take the subsidy out of taxes? If the latter, as one would hope, the very thing the bill is supposed to fix — cost shifting!: the unwilling transfer of money from some people to others — will be the very thing the bill itself does! How is that better than what we have now?

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On the contrary, instead of other people's health insurance premiums having to cover the uninsured (supposedly because doctors and hospitals bill insurance companies at higher rates to cover costs of services rendered to the uninsured), taxpayers, even of relatively modest means, will have to cover those costs. And instead of, say, 1 in 10 or 20 uninsured people racking up thousands or tens of thousands of dollars in medical bills because of illness, accident, or crime they have fallen victim to in a given year, almost EVERYBODY — perhaps 9 out of 10, or 17 out of 20 of the people who used to be uninsured — will be racking up hundreds of dollars a year in medical bills, because now they feel entitled to use a health plan they are paying for, or which is being paid for them by the Government. Whereas before, they wouldn't go to the doctor unless they felt really bad, now they'll go when they feel only moderately bad. And there will STILL be that 1 in 10 or 20 who racks up thousands or tens of thousands of dollars in bills in any given year. How does that save a thing?

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There will be MORE cost-shifting rather than less, and unlike a single-payer system financed by higher taxes on the rich, who can easily afford it, the bulk of the cost-shifting of the Obama plan would be increased impositions upon people of modest means, many of whom are hard-pressed to cover current expenses WITHOUT being forced to pay more for health insurance to cover people supposedly even worse off than they are. It's insane, and unfair. The people who have all the money, the rich, get off scot-free. Indeed, they get to cut benefits to employees of the companies they own, and if they own health insurer stocks, they make TONS of money off all the new premium-payers.

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Moreover, unless I missed it, there is nothing whatsoever in the bill to control healthcare costs. So if hospitals and doctors keep raising their rates, and health insurers have to pay those rates, and insurers have to cover people who cost more, whom they were previously allowed to refuse to insure, total healthcare outlays will continue to rise ever higher and higher and higher, gobbling up more and more of the Nation's gross domestic product. And why wouldn't hospitals and doctors profiteer if everybody has to pay whatever healthcare providers demand?

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One could argue that preventive care, which the uninsured do not avail themselves of, will, in this new regime, keep people from developing catastrophic illness. That would be the "Stitch in Times Saves Nine" theory of medical costs. Does the math really work? Will people in any way alter their lifestyle to avoid major medical problems just because they can go to a doctor early enuf for an intervention? Will people actually go to the doctor for early detection testing, or go only when they're not feeling well? Men as a group are notorious for not going to the doctor unless they feel really bad, and some classes of women feel they should be giving care, not getting it. Will the working poor really take time off from work — for which they will be docked, or perhaps even fired — to see a doctor for preventive care? I doubt it. And will they really take "doctor's orders" about lifestyle, what they eat, how much they exercise, whether they smoke? Or will they just ignore anything they don't want to hear? President Obama still smokes, despite the best medical treatment on Earth and access to smoking-cessation products and therapies.

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The individual mandate is, further, completely unconstitutional, and fascistic. Government asserts the right not just to take one fourth of our money before we get to spend a cent on things we personally want, but now also asserts the right to tell us how we must spend hundreds of after-tax dollars each month too! There is no authority in the Constitution for Government's requiring individual citizens to spend their own money on ANYTHING of Government's choosing; not ANYTHING, even if it costs only 5¢, much less thousands of dollars a year, year after year without end. Quite the contrary, the Fifth Amendment forbids Government to take people's private property (their income, in this case) except for public use, at just compensation. "Just compensation" means MONEY. If the Government takes $475 a month from you, it must be for a Governmental use, and the Government must pay you $475 a month! Plainly that is not what is envisioned here.

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No, Government says that as a condition to your living in the United States, you must spend thousands of dollars a year on something you may not want, and that you must buy it from a private company you may not want to do business with at all. Where does Government get the NERVE to tell you that you HAVE to buy health insurance, or a car, or a house, or anything else, just because the Government says it's "good for you" – "We know best, and you will do as you're told, or we will fine you. And if you refuse to pay the fine, we will send you to PRISON."

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This is not what we want. No free people can consent to such tyranny.

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Worse, the bill would not take effect for four years, during each of which years (at least) 45,000 uninsured Americans will DIE. That's 180,000 Americans who will DIE from a preposterous delay in implementation of universal healthcare, by any plan. How do they justify that? This preposterous delay suggests again that Obama is a Republican agent, putting forth a bill that is hugely unpopular and delaying its implementation until long after the midterm Congressional elections this year. If the bill is something people would actually like, they won't know that they like it until after it goes into effect in 2014, by which time control of both houses of Congress may have passed to Republicans, who can defeat the bill either by repealing it before it even goes into effect or by simply refusing to fund it. Would Obama veto a repeal? Or sign it, because he's really a Republican? And if he were to veto it, might the Republicans have achieved a veto-proof majority in both houses because of this bill?

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What the people of the United States really want is single-payer. We want to be able to show up at any hospital or make an appointment with any doctor and have all the expenses covered as of right. The supposition underlying the current plan is that healthcare is a privilege, not a right, and you have to pay for it as a separate charge — or set of charges: health insurance premium, deductible, and co-pay — and if you can't afford that, that's tuf, because the Government is going to force you to pay for it. If that means you have to cut back on other things, like food, heat, electricity, rent or mortgage payment, that's tuf. Because you don't have the right to spend your own money as you choose. You will buy what we tell you to buy, and if that means you lose your house or heat in the winter, that's your problem.

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What "unintended consequences" might this measure produce? Here's one: people who now work in the arts, and sacrifice to keep their expenses low so they can afford to create art, books, dance, drama, comedy, will have to give up on all that and just take a job to cover the costs of everything they now pay PLUS healthcare. They will have to relegate their art to such few hours as they have left over from all their other responsibilities.

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Here's another presumably unintended consequence: People now struggling to make ends meet and keep a roof over their head will be forced into foreclosure, or homelessness. They will have to take a less expensive apartment, and cram a family of five into a three-room apartment. But that will increase family closeness, a good thing, right? No, it will exacerbate family tensions, and produce an increase in violent interpersonal conflicts. Let's increase domestic violence. What a good idea!

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Here's another: corporations that now provide health insurance will shift more of the costs to employees, because no tax credit is really going to offset completely the costs of health insurance, and in this age of cutthroat world competition, an American corporation that has to provide health insurance is going to be unable to compete globally. So either they shift the costs onto employees or, if that is forbidden by Mussobama, they close down operations in the United States entirely and move everything to China, India, and other low-wage countries — which is completely fine with Mussobama. One way of shifting costs to employees without cutting health insurance as such is by cutting wages, or refusing to provide periodic wage increases, which amounts to the same thing: lower wages in real dollars. And so the Senate bill will speed the race to the bottom that Americans are now suffering from.

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Is that actually an unintended consequence? Or is the present measure INTENDED to push the bulk of Americans into poverty, so the rich can pay ever less and reap ever more? Obamacare will trap everyone from the middle-middle class to the poor in a downward spiral of ever lower wages and benefits, and debt they cannot escape, now made worse by having to pay hundreds of dollars a month for health insurance. Many people will not know how to apply for Government subsidy, or will find that the Government doesn't think they are desperately poor enuf, so won't give them a subsidy. They will be ruined. They will have to work at anything they can find, at any wage, because they will be trapped by a system designed to crush them.

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Would that be an unintended consequence of the present healthcare bill, or its actual intent: to reduce the bulk of Americans to wage slavery and debt slavery to the rich, while pretending to be bestowing a great boon upon them?

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At end, it doesn't matter whether the bill is intended to destroy personal freedom and reduce Americans to economic slaves of the rich, or such enslavement is not actually intended but just a fully foreseeable consequence. It is part and parcel of a move in recent decades to destroy the quality of life of Americans and give them the income and lifestyle of the bulk of people in the Third World. A sentence in the Declaration of Independence comes to mind: "when a long Train of Abuses and Usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a Design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their Right, it is their Duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future Security."

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The Senate plan must be defeated; single-payer must be enacted, effective immediately; and the costs of single-payer healthcare must come out of the pockets of the rich. They have all the money in the world, and it all comes from us, whom they exploit and sell to. It's time for them to give some of our money back. If they don't like that, THAT'S tuf. We may not have been able to get to George III and slit his throat. The abusive rich are, however, well within striking distance. They should "be afraid; be very afraid". There's only so far you can push Americans before they snap.